Personal product treatments today are a part of body care that is of special importance for the maintenance of personal hygiene. In general, the personal product compositions of the present invention are products which are applied to either the whole of the body or to specific areas of the body such as the hands, arms, face, legs, lips or feet. For this reason, a special importance is attached in the cosmetic area to personal products particularly, bath preparations, cleansing preparations, skin care preparations, shaving preparations and deodorant or antiperspirant preparations.
The primary function of a personal product composition is to cleanse the skin gently without irritation or excessive defatting or overdrying the skin. In addition, successful personal product compositions should not leave the skin tight or taut after frequent routine use. After accomplishing the cleansing action, the personal product composition should leave the skin feeling soft, smooth, silky and moisturized while simultaneously providing a rich copious foam or lather. This has become a difficult challenge to meet and it is not surprising to find that considerable resource and effort have been directed towards the discovery and development of new ingredients that provide improved foam, viscosity, clarity and conditioning characteristics. The patent literature, cosmetic journals and formularies describe many such ingredients, however, they still do not provide all the answers to the problems encountered in making a totally satisfactory product. For one thing, it is known that certain mild surfactant systems when formulated for skin cleansing, often exhibit poor foam or low lather performance. On the other side, the use of high sudsing surfactants with lather boosters can yield acceptable lather volume, unfortunately however, such surfactant systems are usually harsh to the skin. It will be appreciated that these two factors make the formulation process, a delicate balancing act.
It has now been found that the inclusion of a heteroatom containing alkyl aldonamide compound in a personal product composition of the invention, surprisingly provides improved foam, viscosity, clarity and conditioning characteristics while simultaneously making the skin feeling soft, smooth, silky and moisturized. These findings are quite unexpected and have not been recognized or appreciated in the art.
The personal product compositions of the present invention may be in aerosol, liquid, gel, cream, lotion, spray, paste, roll-on, stick, tablet, powdered and bar form. Included among the personal product compositions are bubble bathes, shower gels, body shampoos, skin cleansers or lotions, liquid soaps, toilet bars, syndet bars, sunscreens, shaving creams, deodorants or antiperspirants and the like.